The five points businesses must consider beforing investing in VoIP

Just came across this very lengthy, detailed piece on what VoIP's role will be in the business sector. According to a recent survey, nearly 4 in 10 companies have installed VoIP, with another 33% planning to install it in the near future.

That's pretty impressive for this still young technology. Obviously, companies are doing it mainly to save themselves major dollars in phone bills, but a growing number of them are stating that they will be leveraging VoIP for all sorts of communications applications, including videoconferencing.

With that in mind, this story lists five specific points that businesses should be aware of before they take the VoIP plunge:

1. Inevitability--the customers as well as the competition are adopting VoIP, and it stands to reason that companies should realize the shelf-life of PBX-based telecommunications systems are nearing their end.
2. Cost--while it is true that companies will save big bucks on their phone bills once a VoIP system is in place, it's going to take a big investment to develop and deploy an effective system.
3. Deployment--configuring an enterprise VoIP system will take some doing, and will end up costing both time and money in order to do it right.
4. Security--apparently hacking into a VoIP platform is not too difficult for experienced, persistent hackers, so it goes without saying that a major investment in security is a no-brainer.
5. Usage--although most companies will be leveraging VoIP for calls at the outset, other applications including data sharing, tele- and videoconferencing, and e-mail will become standard parts of a typical enterprise VoIP platform.

Obviously, we've only scratched the service here, so the linked story is definitely worth a long look.